Regular Vs Special Coffee

Coffee lovers have two regular or specialty options. What’s different about specialty coffee that regular doesn’t have and why do people care?

The journey of a coffee bean is long and complicated. The coffee bean goes through a series of stages during which it spoils or turns into a flavorful coffee. The ruined bean could make a whole container of coffee taste like bitter urine. Yes, you read it right.

Let’s make it clear, in today’s world; regular coffee is just poor quality produced coffee that lacks transparency and sustainability. As a result, it gives you an unpleasant coffee experience with its bad taste and not-so-out-of-this-world feeling. On the other hand, specialty coffee guarantees quality at all stages of production from bean to cup.

Also, specialty coffee is good for you in many ways besides its taste. You may have done studies on the health benefits of coffee due to the reduced risk of various types of cancer, Alzheimer’s, dementia and diabetes. On the other hand, drinking regular coffee can lead to the worst side effects that affect your body from head to toe.

So how would you choose your coffee now? How would you know if you are drinking regular or specialty coffee? There is only one way to understand this and that is to understand the details of coffee production from planting to preparation.

Growth and Processing

It starts with a coffee bean, the same seed that coffee is made from. Initially, an unprocessed coffee bean is planted, which has to be of supreme quality, which has to be planted at the correct time in the correct place for the production of supreme quality coffee. There are two groups of coffee Robusta and Softer Arabica, but they are easy to grow. Generally, all types of specialty coffees are produced from top quality Arabica beans.

After three or four years, the coffee tree bears its first fruit, that is, coffee beans that can be harvested. Generally, the coffee beans are picked by hand using selective picking or strip picking. Strip picking is done quickly but involves picking all the berries from the trees simultaneously. Selective harvesting requires more time, but the results are better since only the beans that are close to maturity are collected and the raw beans are left.

After the collection stage comes the processing stage. This should be done as quickly as possible to avoid spoilage. There are three ways to process coffee beans, Moist, Semi and Dry.

In the dry method, we spread the coffee beans out to dry on a larger surface area in the sun. In the wet method, the pulp is removed from the coffee beans and we store the beans to ferment in the tanks. After that we wash them with water. This is the most crucial stage of processing where most errors are made. Poor fermentation and washing can result in an off-bitter coffee taste that cannot be removed later.

After drying the coffee beans, we separate them by weight and size. In this process, we remove all the bad color and damaged seeds. It is important to remove the poor quality bean, as it can ruin the entire coffee by adding a sour vinegar-like flavor to it. After sorting, the green coffee beans are stored in sisal or jute sacks to be sent for roasting.

Roast

When the coffee beans arrive for roasting, we taste them for color. The taster also known as taster details the quality. Immediately after the visual approvals, the roasting, smell, preparation, sipping and quality tests are carried out, which is once again approved by the taster to begin roasting the rest of the beans.

We roast the bean at about 230-260 degrees Celsius. We keep the beans moving while they are roasted. When the internal temperature reaches 230 degrees, the oil emerges from the beans. The beans change color from green to brown and the coffee beans reach the highest level of aroma. After completing the process, the beans are cooled through air or water. Now the beans are ready to be brewed for 2 to 30 days, as the aroma starts to fade after that. Most of the time, the highest quality specialty coffee delivers great flavors even after the given amount of time, but regular coffee is hopeless.

Grinding and brewing

The beans can be bought whole or we can grind them. Although ground beans make a world of difference by extracting all the flavor in a very short time for a perfect cup of coffee. We grind the finest beans for espresso and keep them coarse for filtered brewing.

Coffee preparation is like a process in a chemistry lab. You can spend more time studying the process; however, it is enough for many of us to cover the basics. Now brew your coffee with your preferred method carefully and take a sip and appreciate the long journey of the perfect coffee bean.